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  BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY ROBERT REGINALD

  THE NOVA EUROPA FANTASY SAGA

  The Hieromonk’s Tale

  1. Melanthrix the Mage

  2. Killingford

  3. ’Ware the Dark-Haired Man

  The Archquisitor’s Tale

  4. The Righteous Regicide

  5. The Virgin Queens

  6. The Prince of Exiles

  The Protopresbyter’s Tale

  7. Brother Theo’s God

  8. Questions and Questings

  9. “Whither Goest Thou?”

  The Hypatomancer’s Tale

  10. The Cracks in the Æther

  11. The Pachyderms’ Lament

  12. The Fourth Elephant’s Egg

  OTHER TITLES

  Academentia: A Future Dystopia

  The Attempted Assassination of John F. Kennedy

  Dead Librarians and Other Shades of Academe

  The Elder of Days: Tales of the Elders

  If J.F.K. Had Lived

  Invasion! (War of Two Worlds #1)

  The Judgment of the Gods and Other Verdicts of History

  Knack’ Attack (Human-Knacker War #2)

  The Martians Strike Back! (War of Two Worlds #3)

  The Nasty Gnomes (Phantom Detective #2)

  Operation Crimson Storm (War of Two Worlds #2)

  The Paperback Show Murders

  The Phantom’s Phantom (Phantom Detective #1)

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2004, 2013 by Robert Reginald

  Part of this book was previously published in different form under the title The Dark-Haired Man.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  In memory of my grandfather, Roy P. Burgess. I saw him just a week before he died, when he took me down to the main railroad tracks, so we could watch the trains go by. I’m still watching them sixty years later, Grandpa!

  and

  For Mary,

  who has given

  so very much

  of herself—

  to my life,

  to this book,

  to everything.

  L’ENVOI

  The Evil Gods are raging storms,

  Ruthless spirits created in the vault of Heaven;

  Workers of woe are they,

  That each day raise their evil heads for evil,

  To wreak destruction.

  —Utukki Limnuti (Old Babylonian poem)

  The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Na­ture. The player on the other side is hidden from us.

  —Thomas H. Huxley

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For those of you who care about such things, this novel is an alternate history set in a Europe whose geographic features are similar or even identical to our own, with the major (but not sole) divergence from our timeline having occurred in the year 363 ad, when Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, Constantine I’s cousin, was not killed in battle against the Persians (as he was in our world), but lived on for another forty years.

  For the geographic and personal names herein, I used mostly Slavic, Hungarian, German, and Greek models; there are no silent letters in such constructs. Forward accents are intended to provide guides to stress in Slavic words, such emphasis often appearing in locations unfamiliar to west­erners; in Hungarian names, however, the accents merely indicate differences in vowel sounds. I’ve employed circum­flexes in Greek words to distinguish between the letters ep­silon and êta, and omicron and ômega. Umlauts can denote gutteral vowel sounds—or dress up otherwise pedestrian names. The letter “ß” stands for “ss.”

  In the end, of course, I have my own ideas about pronunciation, and each reader will undoubtedly have hers or his. Mangle them as ye will, folks, and no one will be the wiser, unless you actually hear me read a passage someday, and then you can tell me, with as haughty an air as possi­ble, that I’ve got it all wrong! I do try to have fun when creating these things; some of the names here have been invented from the flimsiest of constructs, bearing no discernible relationship to anything that anyone but I will ever be able to determine. Oh, well!

  PROLOGUE ONE

  “NOW WE COME TO IT AT LAST”

  Anno Domini 1242

  Anno Juliani 882

  “And now,” Queen Grigorÿna said out loud, “now we come to it at last.”

  She looked at the pile of parchment sheets scattered on the tables before her, some of them bound together into heavy, authoritative volumes of brown leather, while others were arranged in stacks of loose pages, roughly corresponding to the latter stages of the Great War of a.j. 845—those sections of her manuscript that had yet to be completed.

  It had taken her the better part of three years to reach this point. When her aunt Arrhiána had passed to her reward some five years earlier, she’d left her incomplete history of Kórynthia to her niece, with the hope that Grigorÿna could complete the narrative of the last hundred years.

  But the Queen was only really interested in what had happened when she was a little girl at court, during the time when Pommerelia had warred with Kórynthia, to the great detriment of both countries.

  King Kipriyán iii had seemingly been driven by the events of the winter and spring of that year—a series of murders at court, crimes that had never been solved, but which he’d ascribed to a mythical creature he’d called “The Dark-Haired Man”—into promulgating a jihad against their ancient enemy: the Papist-loving pederasts of the West.

  He’d proceeded with the enthusiastic support of the population and nobility of the kingdom, mobilizing the levies of the counts and barons, and gathering them first at his capital city of Paltyrrha, and thence moving to a temporary base on the eastern flank of the Carpates Spinæ Mountains, the formal dividing line between the two states.

  In June the King had finally invaded Pommerelia with a force comprising tens of thousands of soldiers and support brigades, with his Pretender to the throne of Pommerelia slipping over a pass far to the north.

  Initially, both incursions had met with little resistance.

  And then—and then—came Killingford, the great battle in central Pommerelia that had devastated each side of the conflict almost equally—and ultimately forced the surviving Kórynthi forces to withdraw back to their own border.

  The kingdom was still paying the lingering price for its foolishness, even decades later.

  But what actually had happened during the late summer and fall of the year 845, after the king and his surviving noblemen had returned to Paltyrrha? Something strange, she knew very well—because she’d been a small part of it herself. She needed to know—she had to know—all of the events that had been hidden from the world, in order to settle the raging waves of anger and bitterness that ever threatened to consume her, in order to silence the whispering voices that she could never make go away.

  “Why, why, why?” was all she wanted to know. Was that overmuch?

  But finally, she’d found someone who’d been present there at that time, who’d been a young baron at court during those crucial days and months when everything had changed. His name was Hastur Lord Baniszow, and he’d been waiting to see the Queen for at least five hours now.

  It was good to let the men wait: they became more eager to please as a result. Particularly old men, whose bowels became tied in knots after just a few hours of perching their scrawny butts on those hard, hard wooden benches.

  “Master Svyet!” she shouted, knowing that the old majordomo was going a bit deaf. “Call for Lord Baniszow!”

  “Yes, Majesty,” came the response from his alcove near
the entranceway—and she could hear his sandals scuffing the tiled floors as he slowly made his way down the long corridor leading from the Yellow Room.

  “‘Yes, Majesty’,” she repeated to herself, smiling a bit at the thought. Svyet knew what she wanted, all right. She never had to worry about him!

  PROLOGUE TWO

  “THE 115TH INDIVIDUAL TO MAKE SUCH AN APPLICATION”

  Hastur Lord Baniszow slowly made his way into the reception room. He used a cane to help balance his seventy-year-old body, and from the grimace etched on the lines of his face, even that effort kept him in constant pain.

  Still, he displayed remnants of the man he’d once been: he yet sported a full head of gray hair, sprinkled with spots and streaks of ochre, neatly gathered together behind his neck by a silver ring fastened with an azure pin of lapis lazuli from the East. He kept his beard trimmed down to the rim of his jaw; its sole purpose appeared to be to cover his old-man jowl.

  The baron quietly bowed his respect, and at a gesture from the Queen, settled himself carefully on a be-cushioned chair to the right of the monarch.

  “You are well, I trust,” Grigorÿna said.

  “I am ever Your Majesty’s true and devoted servant,” he replied softly.

  “So I am told,” she said, “although I rarely see you at court these days.”

  “My, uh, ailments prevent me from traveling overmuch, I am very sorry to say, my Lady. My son and heir, Noble Krikor, acts in my stead most of the time.”

  “And yet, I was very interested to note”—she nodded to a slightly curled parchment on the small table to her left—“that you have joined the chorus of nobility petitioning for my hand in marriage.”

  “That is so, Your Grace.”

  “In fact, you are the 115th individual to make such an application in the last year, since my Council approved the solicitation of possible suitors for my hand. They evidentally feel that I should be wed as soon as possible, while I can still bear children. Why should I consider your petition any differently than the others?”

  She smiled slightly as she said the words, but noticed that he paid no attention to her facial expression. Instead, he quite suddenly coughed, long and loud, a hacking, chest-wracking paroxysm that sounded halfway fatal.

  “Do you require a physician?” the queen asked. She was suddenly concerned that he might not be able to leave the Yellow Room without assistance—or a stretcher.

  He held up his hand as he cleared his throat over and over again, trying to regain some small control over his breath.

  “Your Majesty will excuse me,” he managed to say. “An old ailment.”

  He coughed again, more feebly this time, cleared his chest once again, and then sat up straight.

  “Uh, if...if I may ask...,” he almost whispered. “Your other suitors—what kind of men are they?”

  “What do you mean?” Grigorÿna asked.

  “They are young...or no more than, say, middle-aged.” It was a statement, not a query.

  “Yes.”

  “They are rich...or powerful...or foreign...or, well, to put it more bluntly, ambitious,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “They would attempt to subdue your authority, with the assistance of all or some of your Councilmen.”

  “Yes.”

  “They would question your decisions and interfere with your rule.”

  “Yes.”

  “They would, in short, be a continuing problem to you until you were forced to take quick, brutal action against them—or they against you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would do none of these things.”

  “Why?” she said, leaning slightly towards him. Clearly, she was intrigued by this novel approach.

  “Because I do not want them,” he said. “Look at me, Majesty. Look...at...me! I am old, I am worn out, I am ill, I am destined to die in two or five or ten years, after much sickness and debility. I have no ambition at this point in my life. I have no need to prove anything to anyone.

  “My small fief is insufficient to engender greed in others: and yet I have enough of all that I need to enjoy whatever life yet remains to me. I have a loving family, with four living children from my two deceased wives, and numerous grandchildren on which to dote. I have enough to eat, a pleasant place to live, and the respect of my peers. I ask you, what more does any man require? I am grateful every day to Almighty God for having been so generous with his gifts to me, a man who deserves nothing.

  “And yet I bring you the experience of my years surviving political intrigues at court and in my region, if you choose to seek my advice—I certainly will not try to force it upon you. I am incapable of generating additional offspring, however much I might desire them, and so your marriage to me carries with it no danger of ‘accidents.’ By the time I die, you’ll be past child-bearing age.”

  “And just what do you require in return?” the queen asked. She was amused by this preening relict of the past.

  “My son and heir to be advanced to the rank of Count, such title to be passed in due course to his heirs male or female, with myself to receive the title of Duke Consort ad personam; a stipend of 1,000 gold angels to be paid to me annually, so long as I shall live; a seat on your Council of State; and the wine concession for the southern half of New Pommerelia.”

  She chuckled out loud at the latter request; this very bold, bald display of out-and-out greed provided a greater window into the old Baron’s soul than anything else he had said.

  “You seem to have thought this through very carefully, Lord Baniszow, but you’re no saint.”

  “I have never claimed to be, My Lady. I may be unwell physically, but....”—he tapped the right side of his head with the index finger of his right hand—“...I still have something left up here. As I say, I could be a hidden asset to you...but I promise you that at least I will never be a liability.”

  “So you aver,” she said. “Indeed, so say them all. I will consider your request, sir, and give you a response in due course.

  “In the meantime, if you have such concern for my well-being, you could start by helping me now.”

  He cleared his throat once again. “Anything, Majesty.”

  “You were present at Court, I understand, in the latter half of the Julian Year 845.”

  Hastur raised one bushy gray eyebrow; clearly, he wasn’t expecting her question. “I, uh...yes, that is correct, Your Highness. The small contingent of troops from Baniszow, left to my command by my late father, Lord Pastor, had only reached a few leagues beyond Paltyrrha when we received word of the great Battle of Killingford. The Old King returned to Court with the surviving members of the High Council not long thereafter. Our advance was subsequently halted, and I returned to the capital.”

  “I know that,” the queen said. “What I don’t know is exactly what happened subsequently. And I need to understand these things better in order to complete my history of this era. Can you help?”

  The old nobleman briefly dropped his head down on his chest, and for the first time looked every bit his three score years and ten. Finally he said: “I was present, to be sure, during all of those proceedings, but My Lady, I was not privy, being of lower rank, to much of what happened.”

  “But you are Psairothi,” she said.

  “I am, but you understand, Majesty, that I was the heir to a minor fiefdom of the Crown. I never....”

  “But you have had, my ambitious little lord, damn near forty years to reminisce and consider what occurred in those days, and to discuss these matters ad nauseam with your friends and colleagues; and I have no doubt, none whatsoever, that you did so, at length, because you were not, as you have so frequently observed to me already this day, a dunce.

  “So, if you wish your petition to succeed with me, Hastur son of Pastor, you will pay this price: you will tell me all you know over the next few days, until you can talk no longer about these events; and then you will allow me to probe your mind, your emotions, every thought,
as thoroughly as one of my scullery maids might clean the royal privy, or you will gain no privilege from this discussion. Do you understand?”

  He sat back a moment, a flare of despite passing over his wrinkled face like a cloud obscuring a bright summer’s day; and then coughed again, as he was wont to do to gain a moment’s respite to regain his sensiblility, a trait she had already noticed in him.

  She smiled to herself once more. She had purchased him—land, life, and all. She looked into his eyes, and knew suddenly that he knew—and that he accepted the deal.

  “Very well,” he finally intoned, “I will make my bargain with the devil, Majesty, and God forgive us both our sins overt and covert.”

  “So mote it be,” she said, sealing the arrangement.

  He requested a flagon of wine, and when it was put before him by Master Svyet, cleared his throat for the thousandth time, sipped his drink, and stated:

  “In the days following the Old King’s return to Court....”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I SEND YOU GRAVE TIDINGS”

  Anno Domini 1205

  Anno Juliani 845

  Prince Zakháry and Father Athanasios rode hard throughout the rest of the day, camping overnight near the Spargö River. They started again at daybreak. Although they spotted several unidentified riders from a distance, they encountered no one except official Kórynthi patrols and organized supply trains heading north.

  Late on the afternoon of that same day, the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, they finally reached the city of Borgösha. Zakháry immediately produced his credentials and took command.

  Everything was filled with chaos and confusion, with men constantly coming and going; the Skopélosz Pass was clogged with troops, war materiel, and supplies. The contingent of soldiers from Arrhénë had just arrived in Borgösha on the previous day. Prince Zakháry ordered Count Sándor to deploy his brigade south and west to block any possible advance of Pommerelian soldiers from Körvö or Dharmagrigg. More supplies were sent north to aid the returning Kórynthi army, flanked by larger-than-normal patrols to safeguard their transit.